Hello, welcome to my ePortfolio. My name is Emma Delph and I am an IUPUI SPAN student. This is a multi-model portfolio containing my major writing projects for the semester such as, a film review and a narrative style article. Each of my projects have one main focus, bees, or more specifically their decline in population. The film review centers on the movie More than Honey by Markus Imhoof. The narrative style article focuses on my experience visiting bee hives. Both papers are the heart of the website. They are written so that people both familiar and unfamiliar with the topic can learn something new.

 

Creating an ePortfolio was a requirement for W131. Through building it over the semester, my fellow classmates and I are able to see how we progressed during the semester. Helen L. Chen PhD believes creating portfolios encourages folio thinking. She writes, “Folio thinking provides structured opportunities for students to create learning portfolios, reflect on learning experiences emphasizing integrating, synthesis, and self-understanding.” Using folio thinking has given me the same opportunities Chen states, and is also a creative way to access all of my major projects for the class and show any future professors samples of my writing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I first began designing the website I wanted to emphasize fluidity and efficiency so that the audience could easily navigate my website. Hyperlinks provide easy access to all of the tabs, and the navigation bar serves the same function. The simplistic color pallet accents but doesn’t deter from the text on the screen. The yellow lines draw attention to pull-out quotes and pictures to provide quick context to the paper. The pull-out quotes and pictures are arranged in a way so that there is never just plain text on the screen. This is a technique called eye tracking which is “…the process of measuring and analyzing patterns of visual attention of your prospects when they land on your website” (Zehra para.3). Strategically placing elements allows me to guide viewers down the page while ensuring the most important aspects of the webpage are given the spotlight. Zehra, content marketer at VWO, suggests placing the most important elements to the left of the page to follow the natural eye path of humans. I place pictures and quotes to the left and right based on their importance. Eye track has helped me to better my website by ensuring the quality of the design.

 

 

The website originated from the Demi Watson interior design pallet. The template was simplistic and had the basic structure to begin creating my webpage. I started by customizing the navigation bar and adding my film review. At that time, the film review page had one pull-out quote and picture. As I began making my edits, I added more quotes and pictures, and then arranged them to guide the eyes of readers throughout my writings. Examples of this strategy can be seen on the immersion experience page. Scrolling further down past the final draft reveals barren blocks of text. I left those parts without any eye-catching elements as a relic of how the webpage has evolved throughout the semester.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Expanding from the traditional model of writing papers to the world of ePortfolios has been a highlight to my semester. As Professor Oesch-Minor says, “Our worlds are made up of more than words, so it makes sense that our narratives and writing would also use a variety of discourse strategies to engage our target audiences.” Moving past papers and into portfolios has taught me the importance of this growing medium. More features have been added throughout the semester such as a separate tab containing my interview with a beekeeper. The pages have grown from just having blocks of text to a true multi-model project. Edits are still being made regularly to enhance the outcome of the final product. Creating an ePortfolio has been a fun challenging experience this semester and a great jumpstart into my college career.